


to smoke my tears away

by stellatiate



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there is hell and discomfort to pay when allison comes back to life. (not really, not fully, anyway.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	to smoke my tears away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadeblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeblue/gifts).



…

 **i. screaming put your hands in the sky**  
this is nothing but the start

…

Allison knew there would be consequences. There are bound to be consequences to plummeting down between fissures and cracks in the fabric of the universe, dangling in the dark, figurative chasm where people go to die, and being pulled back whiplash-fast into the living world.

Sometimes, little pieces of her feel a little _too_ cold, like her fingertips or her nose or a slice of skin underneath her sweater. Like she is not completely full of life, like there is a soul-blemish that chills through her skin, an opening that will drain all of the vitality and substance out of her.

There are a thousand tiny nuances to being a half-dead teenage girl.

Life can be a watercolor-spill of different hues: a violet-blue sky with glittering diamond-stars, thin, rosy fingertips tapping against a desk, bloody rose-red lips curled into a frown. But then there are days where the world seems faded, as if the opacity was dialed down and everything was transparent, shimmers of color in pastel and mute silence.

Only Scott can understand, though she keeps hearing Deaton speaking about _anchors_ reverberating in her head. Only Scott and Stiles _know_ what it’s like to be dipped down into a well as deep as the fabric of life and pulled back out again.

But even despite that, sometimes she feels the cold shapes of his fingers on her shoulders, like he is going to shove her under the surface and drown her back to life again.

…

 **ii. a whisper in your ear**  
like a stain that never comes off

…

Allison is certain that she is nowhere near worthy of being Lydia’s chemistry lab partner, but she still scoots herself close to the redhead and crams her backpack full of books along with her purse in the space between their stools.

Lydia arches a finely manicured brow, completely unimpressed, her mouth slightly agape in a round circle of coral lipstick. (Coral should be the _opposite_ of her color, so faint, so dim, yet it makes her lips look like a sea-star underneath the reflection of waves, vibrant and lively.)

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Like there isn’t anything wrong with _any_ of them.

Unbidden, answers rush to the bow of her lips, but she presses her lips together tightly, holding them back. Strength, her mother would say, wisdom, in making the choice to remain resilient and suffer with something of a poignant silence. “I don’t have to like him. Actually, I rather hate him.”

She pointedly ignores the roll of Lydia’s eyes from beside her.

No, she doesn’t _hate_ Isaac. It is more of a toxic combination because he is like a slow-winding beauty, like vines and thorns sunk into her skin, tendrils wrapped completely around her. She is tangled in how easily she folds into his arms and how quickly he comes when she ends up outside her own house in the middle of the night, trembling and biting back nightmarish screams. And even with all of those intimate pieces of her collected for his own gain, he doesn’t ever use them against her, doesn’t ever try to pin those shards back into her body.

As if that would make her feel any more whole.

Maybe her thoughts are leaking into the air, because he is stretched forward across his desk, unmoving, until she sighs; and then, his eyes dart over his shoulder, icy and narrowed onto her, before he flicks them around the room inconspicuously.

She presses her shoulder into Lydia’s, ignoring the pointedly annoyed look boring into the side of her face.

…

“I know you’ve been avoiding me.”

Allison sighs. As much as she wants to slam the door in his face, he bothers to ring the doorbell and risk being greeted by her father and his weapon of the week. She collapses into a slump against the edge of the door and Isaac doesn’t move; he stands in place behind the threshold of the door, eyes cast somewhere off to the side.

“I haven’t,” she glances down at the space between them, counts the inches, and then looks back up at him, “I’ve been here.”

Isaac looks less than impressed, but she steps out of the doorframe, allows him space enough to enter the house (and still, he slips in like a ghost past her, his body a mere whisper away from her own, and Allison feels that static again—that vitality that Isaac seems to carry and no one else seems to have).

His eyes sweep across his surroundings but Allison only watches him, the tick of his jaw, the widened shape of his electric blue eyes, the unsteady way that he walks through her house. “I don’t always feel…welcome, exactly.” He stops and looks over at her.

It’s not like she is expecting any company; her dad flits in and out of the house of his own will, only chancing to call her name out and wait for an answer before he closes the door behind him. Allison is already wearing pajamas though the sun glints through the window adjacent to her, and her hair is a sloppy pile of tangled hair ties on her head.

Still, Isaac looks at her as if the sky is reflected across her body, like she is some grand, wonderful thing.

She wants him to kiss her _really_ badly (and then, she wants to punch him because she is thinking that way).

…

 **iii. suffering from delusion**  
poor, sweet, suffering girl

…

She wants to remember the first time they were alone like this, _really_ alone. Scott is a vivid presence in her bedroom, a romantically charged energy vibrating in her veins; Isaac is wine, like poison—slow and torturous and gently blurring the edges of her reality until it is all blacked out.

All she remembers now is that sometimes they sit thigh-to-thigh on her bedspread and mumble things they don’t have the conviction to say to one another. Sometimes she is angry and takes it out on him, lays his flat across her sheets and crashes into his lithe body beneath her. But most nights, she lets Isaac wrap her up completely, with her head on his heartbeat and his arms around her frame.

Most nights, when she wakes up screaming, he kisses her until she stops.

And then when the sun rises, he slips out of her bedroom, like a shadow, like he was never even there.

…

“No Isaac?”

Lydia’s tone is warped with disdain, but Allison knows it is nothing but concern. Between women, she holds the decryption key to the redhead, she knows what each quirk of her lips mean, what the roll of her eyes is trying to convey. They have become close, though Lydia may find her foolish and dangerous.

It is wise for them to be close.

It still doesn’t dismiss the way Allison digs her nails into Lydia’s silk ruffled shirt, because Allison doesn’t really understand why she is so on edge. (Isaac, Isaac, he has nothing to do with this, nothing at all.)

“What?” Allison snaps her head up, shakes her bangs out of her face. Her hair was an exact mirror of her emotions and she’d once thought there was something refined about it; she’d wrapped that braid of hair around her fist and sliced it to pieces with a hunting knife, serrated ends of hair. It is the sort of disheveled chaos that lends to her natural beauty, like she was just grown this way.

“You’re acting strange.”

Being at Lydia’s house is strange. She remembers when they used to spend time together, and Allison just wants to retrace her steps. She wants to hold Scott’s hand and smile and laugh, she wants to be in constant awe of Lydia’s intellectual prowess, she wants to fight with her mother and father and be a teenager.

She is not ready to grow up this fast, not ready to fall into anyone else’s arms. _No Isaac_.

“Can’t I spend the day with my best friend?” Allison smiles, dimples biting into her cheeks, and Lydia sighs, a wilting flower sort of gesture, as if she is deflating from the inside.

She tugs the ends of her cardigan down to her wrists, doesn’t mention how her skin roils uneasily and how it itches, how she wants to tear it into rivers of red until it is soothed. She doesn’t mention how cold she feels around her temples. Allison sticks her hands in her lap and leans into Lydia, close, _close_ , until they are cheek to cheek.

Lydia smells how sitting in front of a warm fireplace feels.

“I have studying to do,” she chastises in a low voice, her textbook slung across her lap, but she doesn’t shove Allison away as she would any other night. And Allison enjoys the feeling of pure femininity, of being surrounded by the frills and fluff and plush comfort of Lydia’s fashionably decorated room, pillowed on her luxury.

They are just two girls who happen to be friends, and that is what Allison enjoys the most. At least that is what she thinks, before she falls asleep on Lydia’s shoulder.

…

Screaming herself awake is nothing new.

But now she is splayed on the floor with Lydia leaning over her. Her face is a pendant of fear, a whole well of emotions overflowing onto her aristocratic features. Allison has seen calculated emotion from Lydia, she has seen fear only and anger only and happiness only. But Lydia’s face is panicked and angry and fearful all at once, and it is vulnerable, and it is new enough to dry the scream out of her throat.

The moon shines a melancholy blue over the profile of Lydia’s face, but she throws her arms around Allison’s neck and draws her into her chest.

“It’s okay,” Lydia says, _cries_ because she is panicked and angry and fearful all at once, “it’s okay, Allison.” Lydia cries because she has woken up this way so many times with absolutely _no one_ to tether herself to.

Allison listens to the shallow beating of Lydia’s heart and feels the chill settle into her bones as she wraps her arms around her waist.

…

They are late for school the very next day (Allison is an uncoordinated tangle of limbs darting around the room to scoop up her books and Lydia is freaking out, cursing quietly with sharp syllables rolling off of her tongue) but neither of them blame one another.

Allison blames herself for screaming and screaming and screaming, and falling asleep in Lydia’s arms on her bedroom floor.

But Lydia is the one who grips Allison’s hand tight before they walk into the building, fingernails tapping rhythmically against the back of her palm. Her hand is tiny and smooth and well-manicured, and it lends her unknown strength.

She doesn’t even want to let go, even when people see them.

…

 **iv. what am i to you?**  
i was too shy to ask you when we were kissing

…

“Lydia?”

She wants to be infuriated with him for sneaking into her room, but it has become such a rite of passage, such a natural part of their routine that it feels wrong when he is not lying in wait in the shadows of her room.

Isaac looks pale—she doesn’t ask what he does on the nights that he doesn’t come to see her, but by the looks of it, it is something she has no hand in, no business to be levied.

His question still grates on her nerves. “What about Lydia?”

He sits so goddamn close to her. Allison never draws these comparisons, there are no similarities between Isaac and Scott, save that they are both creatures of the night, and both some of the most volatile people she has ever met. But she can’t help but think about Lydia’s eyes, and how they are so much darker than Isaac’s, how they hold so much more within their depths.

Even he has the decency to blush. “You know what.”

Of course she knows, but Lydia doesn’t know, and therefore, Allison will pretend it is nothing. But Isaac knows it is not nothing, so he kisses her on the hinge of her jaw. It tingles, a crooked line that trails all the way up towards her temples.

She hates that he seems to _know_. He is drawn to those empty, cold parts of her, though she would rather Lydia’s warmth to engulf her completely.

“Lydia is my friend,” Allison says, and she almost believes herself.

Isaac doesn’t believe her one bit, because she can see the way his eyes narrow at her. “How sweet.”

…

Lydia texts her more times than she can count.

 _Are you okay?_ She asks, as if Allison will ever be okay, _What are you doing later?_

_Allison text me back._

_Do you always dream about it?_

_Allison._

_I just want to see you._

Every time she summons the courage to respond, another message flickers into existence, and she must agonize again.

Until her dad pokes his head into her room, his eyes crinkled with the remnants of a smile. He seems to do that more often these days, stare at her and smile faintly, like there is something lingering in her face, the reflection of her mother.

This time, he sidesteps the doorway to allow someone in.

“Are you _really_ just staring at your phone, Allison?”

Her father shoots her a reproachful look between the scatter of her textbooks on her bed and the growing pile of laundry in the corner of her room, but he leaves the two of them alone. Allison directs her attention to the clutter of her bed, neatly packing her notes back into her books, closing her textbooks and stacking them atop one another.

Lydia just stands, just stares at her.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Allison lifts up the stack of her books with a grit of her teeth and a weighty sigh. “I didn’t know what to say…to any of them.”

“Oh.” Lydia leans against her bedroom door, her purse sliding down to the knot of her hands behind her back, “oh.”

She wants to kiss her _really_ badly, and there is no other thought on her mind but the bend and curve of Lydia’s lips.

“You can stay,” Allison shrugs, falls back onto her bed, “if you want to. We can talk.”

Allison kisses her cheek the moment she sits down on the bed beside her, and her lips purse together so firmly that Allison almost kisses the lipstick off of them immediately after. (She tastes the bitter chemical of it in her mouth, though, and her body is all chill in anticipation for the complete and utter rejection she is going to face for this.)

Nothing.

Nothing but, “Is that why you wouldn’t text me back?”

…

 **v. and your lover boy**  
run, run, run back to him

…

There is a lot of kissing.

Lydia is a warm thing to bury her senselessness into, so she kisses the backs of her knuckles when no one is looking at the two of them closely. She catches her in the bathroom and kisses the corner of her lips so her gloss doesn’t smudge. She wraps her arms around her and leans her mouth against the side of her face because Allison is so, _so_ cold.

And Lydia is warm.

…

“I was right.”

Isaac walks beside her in the hallway and smiles at everyone who passes him, though his voice whispers out of the side of his mouth.

“I was right about Lydia.”

Allison curls her fingers into her books until her knuckles burst white and red from the pressure. “So what?”

“So,” he stops for a moment, watches her as she walks a distance away from him, “so, you should have told me. You could have told me.”

Her shoulders lift in a shrug and her lips tighten into a smirk. A malevolent thing for the boy who cradled her in the dark, who let her soak him with her tears, but Allison is reckless and half-dead and has no time to spare feelings.

“You know now.” She turns her back to him, tosses her hair out of her way. “That’s all there is.”

…

It unravels slowly.

It isn’t the screaming and the sobbing that keeps Lydia on edge, because she is always there to cup Allison’s face in her hands and straighten the mess of her hair and slap her cheeks until she has regained some color, some sense.

There is no one to hold them when they are both screaming, embracing one another and crying down each other’s backs.

And Lydia is a frail outline underneath the sheets, her knees tucked up to her chest to keep everything else out. “What is _wrong_ with me?” Like there isn’t anything wrong with Allison, too.

She is the one who screams and screams and screams. She is the banshee, her throat is torn out of nightmares and fright and danger and terrible things shrieking from her mouth.

Allison is nothing but a half-dead teenage girl, and there are a thousand tiny nuances to being a half-dead teenage girl.

She kisses Lydia’s mouth when she falls asleep, and resolves to find Isaac by morning.

…

When she is gone, Lydia doesn’t text. Not one text, not at all.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a gift to **shadeblue** on tumblr and ao3 for the exchange. i tried to incorporate as much of your desired prompts and ships into your gift as possible, so i hope you like it!


End file.
